Minimum wage and plight of pensioners

It is very intriguing for the APC-led federal government to have cajoled the organised labour unions into believing that a new Minimum Wage would be plausible within the context of the parlous economic condition in the country.  The reality is that such a gargantuan economic burden will never be possible without restructuring of governance and diversification of the economy to reinvent true and fiscal federalism.
It is illusory for the APC-led federal government to go with the impression that assuaging the agitation for a new minimum wage due to the runaway inflation in the country and tackling the plight of pensioners would be possible by separating restructuring of centralised federalism from diversification of the economy. The Hon. Minister for solid minerals and development, Dr. Kayode Fayemi has been advising state governments to generate additional revenues to supplement the dwindling monthly receipts from the federation accounts.
At times, one wonders whether government operatives at the federal level believe that other Nigerians are daft. Obviously, the minister has been economical with truth so as to dance to the tunes of President Muhammadu Buhari .The President has never left anybody in doubt that he does not want to hear about restructuring of governance.
Fact remains that the Nigerian economy cannot be diversified to create massive employment if the National Assembly has not abrogated the laws that prevent the federating units from exploring and exploiting the mineral and natural resources within their domain. It was the devious agenda of the feudal caliphate through the military jack-boot that led to the vicious law.
It is painful that the patently tacit covenants supposedly reached by the coalition of political parties that birthed APC have wittingly allowed the obviously parochial programmes of the North to be perpetuated on Nigerians. Politicians from the south-west geo-political zone who were in the ACN believed in restructuring to reinvent true and fiscal federalism.
Recently, the vice-president, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo declared that what Nigeria needs is diversification of the economy and not restructuring. The angst of well-meaning Nigerians was aptly reflected in the write-up of Ocherome Nnanna [Vanguard July 14, 2016] where he said: “But Osinbajo’s unsolicited disavowal of restructuring and true federalism, and his trumpeting of mere “diversification” of the economy appears to have made it clear that the Tinubu political group has abandoned Awoism in order to be accommodated within Buhari’s caliphate presidential dispensation…It is a sell-out. This is a clear political apostasy for a political leader whose core political platform he climbed on the back of Awoism to buy over south-west electorate”.
The vice-president unwittingly contradicted himself by saying in another forum that he backed state police and resource control.
It is unrealistic for the federal government to talk about new Minimum Wage without resource control. Again, it would futile to talk about new Minimum Wage when over 27 states can no longer fulfill their monthly obligations on salaries and pensions. The plight of pensioners in the three tiers of government has been crying to high heavens and there is no sign of solution in the states.
However,the Minister of Labour, [Dr.] Chris Ngige expressed the federal government’s readiness to fully comply with the provision of the Constitution that makes review of pension compulsory. While receiving the leaders of the Association of Contributory Pensions of Nigeria in his office he said: “The Constitution is clear in Section 173[3] on how pension should be administered. It should be reviewed every five years or upon an increment in salary.” Dr. Ngige was the only governor in his tenure that adopted and implemented the harmonised 150% and 142% increases in pension rates respectively. Sadly,his successors who their attention were drawn to the National Salaries Income and Wages Commission Circular No. SWC/054/S.164/29 of August 5, 2010 shockingly demonstrated supercilious demeanour on the lamentations of pensioners to harmonise their pension peanut since 2011 when the current Minimum Wage came into effect
It is baffling that the last bail-out fund was not used to ameliorate the plight of pensioners, even when some governors left the impression that all is well with their workers and pensioners. The case of Anambra State is pathetic, whereby the pensioners were had been subjected to four harrowing verification exercises from 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2016, yet the pensions have not been harmonised. The total cost of the harmonisation is not up to N10, 000, while the immediate past and present governors have been spending billions on private and federal government institutions ostensibly for elections purposes.
Mr. Onwubiko wrote from Awka